Grown Ups Bios
Issue 1, Volume 1 (December 2025)
Adhir Biswas
Adhir Biswas has lived in Kolkata since 1967. He began to write in 1976, aged twenty-two, contributing fiction and nonfiction to little magazines. He ran a bookshop for many years. He is the well-known editor of Gangchil and Doel. The first volume of his memoir won the Suprabha Majumdar Memorial Prize by the Bangla Academy of the Government of West Bengal in 2014. He was awarded the Vidyasagar Memorial Prize for children’s literature by the West Bengal government in 2017. V. Ramaswamy took up literary translation of subaltern writing after almost two decades of social and grassroot activism in his city, Kolkata, for and with the labouring poor. He has translated The Golden Gandhi Statue from America: Early Stories, Wild Animals Prohibited: Stories / Anti-stories, and This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar’s Tale: Two Anti-Novels, by Subimal Misra, and the novel The Runaway Boy, by Manoranjan Byapari. He was awarded the inaugural Literature Across Frontiers – Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship in 2016.
Ahana Bhattacharjee
Ahana Bhattacharjee is a 2nd year PG student at the department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University. She loves reading, writing and has also translated Saikat Rakshit’s Bengali novel Hadik into English, published by The Antonym Collections.
Amanita Sen
Author of two volumes of poetry – Candle in my Dream published by Writers Workshop and What I Don’t Tell You by Authorspressgroup. Amanita Sen has also written scripts for three short films that have been screened at Film Festivals. She is the poetry editor with The Antonym and the literary advisor to ISISAR – International Society for Intercultural Studies and Research; a registered organization working on promoting peace and culture for the last three decades. A mental health professional, Amanita practices in Kolkata.
Aparna Singh
Aparna Singh (Ph.D.) is an academic, poet and short story writer. She has taught in various educational institutions across Kolkata in the past decade. She works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Diamond Harbour Women’s University. She has published in multiple national and international journals and books to date. Her area of interest includes Indian Writing in English and Dalit literature. She has four edited volumes to her credit and has worked as a copyeditor with Sahitya Akademi. She is one of the authors of the poetry collection Three Witches’ Songs and the author of the short story collection Periodic Tales, which won the Nissim International Special Mention Award 2024. She has published book reviews with The Statesman, Muse India, The Hooghly Review, and the international journals Setu and Indialogs.
Ashin N I
Ashin N I is an illustrator and concept artist from Kochi, Kerala. She is currently in myher third year of Communication Design at the National Institute of Design, Andhra Pradesh. She loves exploring stories and ideas through expressive visuals and imaginative worlds.
Arindam Sen
Arindam Sen is a Film curator and critic. His interests lie in the domains of Experimental, Documentary, and Artists’ Films. He is a regular contributor to several film journals, magazines, and publications on these topics. He is a co-founder of Brussels based Experimental film platform, Cinema Parenthèse. He has curated a retrospective of Govindan Aravindan’s films for the Close-Up Film Centre, London in 2017, and has most recently published ‘Distant Voices’ (Stereo Editions, 2024).
Barsha Chakraborty
Barsha is a policy and advocacy expert specialising in Digital Rights and technology-facilitated gender-based violence. With over 18 years of experience, she has led impactful media and advocacy campaigns for national and global human rights organisations, working at the intersection of gender, technology, and social justice.
Beyond her professional work, Barsha proudly identifies as a full-time cat slave, part-time crocheter, and singing enthusiast, bringing creativity, humour, and heart to everything she does.
Bengusu Ozcan
Born in 1995 in Çorum, she studied Industrial Engineering and Psychology at Sabancı University after graduating from Atatürk Science High School. In addition to her two published novels, Maskeli Kedi (The Masked Cat) and Antika Adam (The Antique Man), she continues to write. She shares her short-lived adventures and ideas on her podcast The Generalist.
Deb Bandyopadhyaya
Deb Bandyopadhyaya is a scientist and a student of poetry. Deb’s poems portrait vivid imagery of scattered pieces of his life in distant continents. He is also a passionate photographer and often experiments with various mediums, subjects and technology. In this work, the poet and the photographer meet in air.
Debangana Banerjee
Debangana Banerjee was born and raised in Santiniketan, India. She received her BFA and MFA in printmaking from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. She was a national scholar in India before joining the MFA program at Louisiana State University in 2007. She also worked as a visual designer in Communication across the Curriculum program at LSU. Debangana has participated in many solo (Zosima Gallery, Bower Bird Gallery in San Marcos, Jump Start Art Gallery, San Antonio) and group exhibitions including in India, Japan, Australia, England, Canada, and the United States. Debangana published a poetry chapbook Come Back River (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and two artist’s books in 1998 and 1999 in India. Her poems (in Bengali and English) has been published in such journals as Toad Suck Review, International Poetry Review, Unlikely Stories Mark V, MATWAALA, Prabash Bandhu, Sharad Arghya. Debangana’s Bengali short stories has been published in Onustup (a leading Bengali magazine in India) and in several Bengali literary magazines in US.
Debangana taught art classes to disabled and disadvantaged children and youths in India and is an active volunteer in social services in various organizations in India and the United States. In addition she has volunteered at LSU Union Art Gallery and the Wittliff Collections, Texas State University-San Marcos. Debangana curated an art show “A Room of One’s Own” at the San Marcos Public Library celebrating International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019. She co-curated an art show “Shilpa: Colors of India-Pakistan-Bangladesh” at Walker’s Gallery, San Marcos (2012). Debangana organized an international poetry reading “Where Are You From?” at the San Marcos Public Library on the occasion of National Poetry Month, April, 2019.
Debangana is the “ArtSpace” Coordinator at Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos and She is an art teacher at the Wonderland School. San Marcos. She also gives private one on one art lessons to Children.
Debjyoti Bhattacharyya
Debjyoti Bhattacharyya started professional writing career as newspaper columnist and storywriter in Samay Prabaha daily (Assam) in 1995. Presently a professional writer with more than 40 published titles, a large segment of Bhattacharyya’s work comprises science fiction and popular science – Bishbaidya, Operation Phoenix, Onyokonokhane, Aryabhater Puthi – to name a few. He edits a popular webzine called Joydhak and heads a publication house bearing the same name. He has edited a number of science fiction and alternate history compilations including Alo Andharer Upakhyan (a speculative fiction anthology by the African diaspora in translation), 57 theke 47 (an anthology of alternate history), and many more. His important English works include From Random Marks to Pictograms – A Study of Evolution of Rock Art, a compilation of his published papers on the subject.
Isha Nagar
A visual artist and a design graduate from NIFT, Delhi, Isha Nagar creates fantasy-like illustrations and artworks for children. Until now, she has worked on award-winning books like The Ghost of Malabar, Uncontrollable, Mini’s Money and 3 other books in the series, V for Vaccine, among others. Apart from books, she also indulges in her own art practice using charcoal, watercolour, and oil paintings. She has worked with publishers like HarperCollins India, Penguin Random House, Duckbill Books, etc. You can view her work at www.ishanagar.com
Krish Ashok
Krish Ashok is not a chef but cooks daily. He is not a scientist, but he can explain science with easy-to-understand clarity. He trained to be an electronic engineer but is now a software engineer. He learnt to cook from the women in his family, who can make perfectly fluffy idli without lecturing people on lactobacilli and pH levels. He likes the scientific method not because it offers him the ability to bully people with knowledge, but because it confidently lets him say, ‘I don’t know, let me test it for myself.’
When he is not cooking, he’s usually playing subversive music on the violin or cello. He lives in Chennai with his wife, who sagely prevents him from buying more gadgets for the kitchen, and their son, who has the flora and fauna in the neighbourhood terrorized.
You can follow him at @krishashok on Twitter at your own risk.
Mario Senna
Mario Senna (Rome, 1989) has Italy in his first name and France in his last name. He teaches biology in high school and loves trees, especially those that grow in cities. He collaborates with a few publishing houses as a freelance proofreader of scientific divulgation books.
Nadia Imam
Nadia Imam is an associate editor, translator, based in Kolkata. She currently serves as Associate Editor and Imprint Lead at The Antonym Collections, where she works across multiple imprints, including Jilipi (children’s books) and Dreamcatcher, dedicated to literature in translation for young readers. Her published works include Once Upon the Queens: Gender Upturned Folktales from Bengal (2024) and contributions to The Year’s Best Bengali Stories in Translation 2024. She is presently working on her first translated novel.
Nazes Afroz
Nazes Afroz has worked as a journalist for nearly 40 years, 18 of which for the BBC, covering current affairs spanning South, Central and West Asia in the capacity of a producer and later as a senior editor. Nazes supervised and led the research project on third generation memory of the Bengal Partition on behalf of the Goethe Instituts in Kolkata and Dhaka. He continued with the project with a photography work titled, ‘Uncertain Memories/Refugee Memories of Kolkata’, which was exhibited in Kolkata in 2018. Apart from coauthoring a cultural guidebook on Afghanistan, Nazes has translated Syed Mujtaba Ali’s classic memoir of his time in Kabul, ‘Deshe Bideshe’ into English under the title ‘In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan’. As a passionate documentary photographer Nazes has held several exhibitions in countries across three continents from 2015.
Nilufer Bose Archment
Nilufer Bose Archment holds a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from Columbia University New York, worked for 5 years at UN Headquarters in NYC in the Department of Public Information and went on to financial PR on Wall Street.
Prabuddha Banerjee
Prabuddha Banerjee is an eminent music composer and director, working primarily in the Bengali Film Industry for the last 22 years.
Trained in Western Classical violin since his childhood, he has evolved into a multi-instrumentalist over the years. During his student days, Prabuddha was actively involved in the pioneering movement of creating independent bengali songs, following the trails of Mohiner Ghoraguli and was one of the frontmen of the band Nagar Philomel.
Prabuddha graduated as a Mechanical Engineer from Jadavpur University and worked in the field of project design and management for petroleum and downstreams for 22 years before taking a leap into full time music composing and directing in 2003.
Prabuddha has been the music director for innumerable advertisements and 53 Bengali films including documentaries so far. He has collaborated with eminent film directors like Rituporno Ghosh, Suman Mukhopadhyay, Indranil Roychoudhury, Kaushik Ganguly, Srijit Mukherjee.
Since 2017, Prabuddha has made his foray in Bengali theatre and has given music direction for landmark theatrical productions like Don, Taake Bhalo Laage, Tiner Tolowar, Mahatma Bonam Gandhi.
Awards
1. National Award for best background score for Jyesthoputro ( directed by Kaushik Ganguly)
2. Filmfare award for best background score for Phoring ( directed by Indranil Roychoudhury)
3. Filmfare award for best background score for Nagarkirtan ( directed by Kaushik Ganguly)
4. Best Music Director in 9th SAARC INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL held at Sri Lanka for Nagarkirtan
5. Bengal Film Journalists Award for best background score for Nagarkirtan
6. Critics Choice Award LA for Best Original Film Score for Lokkhichhele (directed by Kaushik Ganguly)
7. Best Individual behind the scenes Advertising Club of Indiworking
Priyankar Gupta
Priyankar Gupta is a pre-visualizer and a creative consultant in the field of media, advertising and broadcast design. He has worked with various publishing companies across the globe as an Illustrator for children’s book and books for young
adults for two decades. He has been a mentor in various design schools across the country teaching various forms of visual narratives. Currently he is a Faculty in the Digital and Media Arts in Srishti Manipal Institute.
Proiti Seal Acharya
Proiti Seal Acharya is a writer based in Kolkata. Her work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Goya Journal, Benzinga etc. and in anthologies by Scholastic Inc., Bee Books, and Rupa Publications.
Rajendrani Mukherjee
Rajendrani, or “The 13th Sparrow”, is an urban bird with a wild soul, stuck between two worlds, working undercover as an illustrator! Her root belongs to the field of Psychology, which is still an integral part of her works. She draws stuff, ranging from commissioned artworks for gifting and invitation, to academic and storybook illustrations and many others. Her”bag of holding” includes books, coffee, chocolates, cats, favourite characters, travel tickets, miniatures, and a pretty piece of a nightsky full of trillions of galaxies!
Ratnadipa Biswas
Ratnadipa Biswas is an avid reader who loves cats, cameras, and all things Studio Ghibli. She completed her B.A. in English (Hons.) from Ramakrishna Sarada Mission Vivekananda Vidyabhavan, Kolkata, and is currently pursuing an M.A. in English at the University of Delhi. When she’s not climbing the hill of assignments in the library, you’ll find her in the canteen scribbling in her notebook or catcalling cats.
Reema Sen
Reema is a teacher of English who believes that stories are the best way to open doors to the world. She looks after her school library and loves creating activities that make children fall in love with reading. An avid reader herself, she finds joy not only in books but also in travelling—her other great passion—discovering new places, people, and tales waiting to be told.
Rupak Neogy
Born and raised in Chandannagar, Hooghly district, West Bengal—a town with a rich historical legacy as a former French colony. A versatile illustrator, art director, and Bengali calligrapher, with expertise in book cover design, graphic design, and children’s as well as adult book illustrations. Passionate about Indian folk art traditions, including Alpana and Pata Chitra. Deeply inspired by the artistic and cultural legacy of Rabindranath Tagore and Shantiniketan, as well as the graphic design and illustrations of Satyajit Ray. Worked as a Bengali calligrapher for the international brand like 100 pipers legacy project. Educational qualification – MCA
S Chakraborty
S Chakraborty is a painter and illustrator. They like to travel a lot, be it historical place or sea. But mountains are close to their heart. Hiking adds more charms to their travel plans.
Snow clad peaks in the background is most exciting. We have Himalayas. What else do we need!
Sarbani Dasgupta
Sarbani Dasgupta, After she graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata, Sarbani Dasgupta designed shoes for a really big company for a really long dozen of years till she didn’t, turned around and picked up her paintbox where she left it. Now a full time artist, her work has been exhibited in Kolkata and Dhaka whereshe enjoys the company of her favorite humans, books and films
Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena
Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena (15 September 1927 – 23 September 1983) was a Hindi writer, poet, columnist and playwright. He was one of the seven poets who first published in one of the “Tar Saptaks”, which ushered in the ‘Prayogvaad’ (Experimentalism) era, which in time evolved to become the “Nayi Kavita” (New Poetry) movement. He edited the children’s magazine Parag.
Sekhar Basu
Sekhar Basu is a well-loved Bengali writer who’s made a significant mark in the world of short stories, novels, and detective fiction. He began his journey as a sub-editor at Anandabazar Patrika and worked his way up to become the Chief Sub-Editor for Hindustan Standard and Business Standard. Over time, he transitioned into writing for Anandamela and eventually wrapped up his career as the Acting Editor of Probashi Anandabazar.
Basu is a celebrated figure in the “Anti-Canonical Short Story Movement,” and he has published eight fantastic collections of short fiction, including “Priyo Galpo.” His writing stands out due to its clear, elegant language and rich imagery, earning him admiration from prominent figures such as writer Bimal Kar and poet Shankha Ghosh.
But that’s not all! Basu has also written around thirty novels, starting with his debut, “Siri,” and including popular titles such as “Tanushrir Jibon” and “Onnyorokom,” which have garnered considerable acclaim from readers. He’s made a splash in the mystery genre, too, with serialized stories in Anandabazar Patrika that turned into adaptations and published collections. His first book was published in 1983, and he remains an influential figure in the literary scene today.
Shankha Ghosh
Sankha Ghosh (born Chittapriya Ghosh; 5 February 1932 – 21 April 2021) was an Indian poet and literary critic. He taught at many educational institutions and won multiple awards, including the Jnanpith Award in 2016. His pen name was Kuntak. Among the most respected names in contemporary Bengali literature, Ghosh was one of the ‘Pancha Pandavas’— along with Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Binoy Majumdar and Utpal Kumar Basu — who gave a new identity to the Bengali literary world.
Silvia Seminara
Silvia Seminara left her hometown in Sicily at 18, when she moved to London to study. After a Philosophy BA at King’s College London and a Linguistics MA at UCL, she gave trade publishing a try. Since 2019 she picks, edits and translates children’s books for Gallucci editore (Rome). Her greatest passion is travelling and absorbing foreign cultures and languages.
Soumitra S Datta
Soumitra S Datta is a senior consultant psychiatrist based in Kolkata. Also an honorary senior research fellow at University College London, UK, he is interested in finding innovative ways to document everyday experiences in the disease and caregiving.
Subarna Banerjee
Subarna Banerjee is a writer, editor, and translator with a Masters in English Literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She considers herself an avid book dragon and ardent fangirl, who loves listening to music and gaming in her spare time.
Subarna Mondal
Subarna Mondal is a dogmom, a traveller, a junk food enthusiast, and a teacher. She has this acute desire to scare people which she cannot somehow manage to do. No one is scared of her. Not even her dog. So she writes scary short stories in the hope that someday someone will be petrified. Till then she will keep on writing.
Upal Sengupta
Upal Sengupta, lead singer and composer, Chandrabindoo, is a cartoonist and origami enthusiast by passion. He loves to explore witty, absurd and sometimes mischievous ideas through his drawings.